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"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all." – Helen Keller

Our New Best Friend

***Warning!!! This posts contains pictures of me after 4 days of not having taken a shower. If the sight of my body filth causes you permanent eye damage, don’t say I didn’t warn you! At least you didn’t have to smell me.***

For Christmas this year, our SixAbroad family took a vacation to Indonesia and Singapore. We had a great time! I’m sure my husband will be making a video of our adventures, so you can look forward to that (or not.)

One leg of our trip was on the Indonesian island of Borneo. We spent five days on a house boat, with no running water, on an alligator infested river in the rainforest. Hence no showers, not even dips in the river. But it was all worth it for the great time we had playing with orangutans. However, this post isn’t about orangutans, it’s about my family’s new best friend.

On the fourth day of our Borneo adventure, we left the river and went to an island in the ocean where we released baby sea turtles. While we were on the island, we were trying to set up what would eventually become this picture:

However, after Cecily had written “Indonesia 2012/2013” in the sand, but before we could snap the photo, a local woman approached us, walked across Cecily’s sand-writing, grabbed Ben and insisted that we take a picture of the two of them. So, of course we did! Honestly, who wouldn’t?

(Notice how she’s resting her head on Ben’s shoulder. Yes, he loved that! What 14 year-old boy wouldn’t?)

Then, because one photo isn’t nearly enough, she yanked Cecily up out of the sand and insisted that we take a picture of the three of them together.

(She’s holding pretty tight onto Cecily’s waist in case Cecily is considering trying to sneak away before the snap of the shutter.)

Then, she yanked me out of my perched position in the sand and insisted on a picture with the mother of this group.

(Ben is behind us with his stick ready, in case he has to defend me from the local–or it may be the other way around.)

Now keep in mind that she didn’t want us to take these photos with HER camera. She wanted us to take these pictures of her with OUR camera. She didn’t even have a camera with her.

At this point, she left us alone and we were finally able to take our “Indonesia 2012/2013” photo.

But then about 1/2 hour later, to our surprise and delight, just as we were about to let our baby sea turtles swim to freedom in the ocean, look who popped back up:

(In order to be seen in the photo, just as I pointed the camera at Ben and his sea turtle, our new best friend stood on her tippy-toes and craned her neck sharply to the left.)

Honestly, just before I snapped that picture, I considered telling Ben to move so that she wouldn’t be in the photo, but then I decided that she really made the picture. Of course, I waited until after I took the picture to tell Ben that our local friend was creeping in his photo. I think that it may be my favorite photo of the trip.

And now, just because they were too cute for words, here is a photo of our sea turtles (affectionately named Swift, Charlie, Saran and Mayonnaise) heading toward freedom:

I’m guessing that they are all probably swimming in the belly of a shark by now.